The following is from a book Disaster. As you know one hundred years ago the Titanic sank.
The gala voyage was the most glamorous Atlantic Crossing of all time. Yet because of out of date seamanship, it was to end in a terrible tragedy when 1500 people drowned or froze to death.
The iceberg that was drifting 500 miles south of Newfoundland’s Cape Race on April 14, 1911,resembled a crouching lion, as high as a 3 storied house and black with lumps of soil and rock frozen deep in its sinister bulk. Only a seventh of the iceberg showed above of the unusually calm sea. And that seventh blurred and blended with the dusk the day ended and the lights came on in the cabins and staterooms of the largest ship in the world pushing her 46,328 tons through the darkness on a collision course set for a mountain of ice slightly larger than St Paul’s Cathedral.
The Titanic was not just the biggest liner in the world, she was the pride of the White Star Line on her maiden voyage. Ten-decked she measured 852 feet from stem to stern, was capable of 23 knots, carried one crew member for every passenger and had suites of such luxury that they cost 870 pounds for the fine day crossing. Her Café Parisian was decorated with trellis work with ivy creepers, her Turkish Bath lit by Moorish lamps, the promenade deck of each private state room half timbered in the manner of an Elizabethan cottage. She was by repute and design ,unsinkable.
And in order not to clutter up her 7 mile of deck she carried only sufficient life boats to provide a place for one person in every three. There was a lot of ice about that day, as every ship in the area was aware. The Caroni had seen it and radioed a warning to the Titanic, as had the Baltic and the Massena. One White Star Liner, the Californian found herself so hemmed in by drifting floes that her captain gave up the struggle and shut down his engines, preferring to let his vessel drift through the night rather than continue groping his way dangerously through in the dark. But the Titanic 30 miles away to the North, drove on at a steady 22 knots. It seems as incomprehensive today as the subsequent Court of Enquiry found it at that time. “Just tell me, when a liner is known to be approaching ice, is it not usual in your experience to reduce speed? I have never known speed to be reduced on any ship I have ever been in in the North Atlantic in clear weather on account of ice”.
The captain of the Titanic was neither incompetent nor of unsound mind. At 63 he had been brought out of retirement solely to oversee this all important event. Bluff, bearded and vastly experienced his enormous salary at the time was 1250 pounds when the commanders were lucky to get half that sum. If the captain was not afraid of icebergs, neither were his peers. In due course captain after captain who could claim between 20 and 40 years service on the high seas would tramp into the witness box and say the same thing: “ We go full speed whether ice is reported or not. As long as the weather is clear, I always go full speed. I would not have reduced speed. I never slow down. “ They were men who had gone to sea in sail and learned their craft clinging in the rigging of tea clippers bucking their way round Cape Horn. Men of unimaginable fortune who were afraid of nothing on earth and probably looked forward confidently to getting at the very least, respectful treatment from God. They were the last of their kind, and although they would have considered it unseamanlike not to have kept a sensible lookout for ice, not one of them would have slowed his ship against the wildly unlikely eventuality of meeting a black iceberg in the dark.
At 11 pm that night ,the captain of the Californian was standing with his third officer when he noticed the lights of a ship in the distance. At that moment Captain Evans the wireless officer, came on deck and the captain asked him if he knew what ship was passing. Evan looked at the lights for a moment trying to adjust his eyes to the night. “Only the Titanic”. The captain said you had better warn the Titanic that we’re stopped surrounded by ice. In the wireless room of the Titanic the senior Marconi operator was a much busier man. The passengers kept him busy sending out messages.
The Marconi operator then received a message from the Californian but he sent them a message telling then to keep out they were jamming him. The Californian didn’t press the point. Later the Marconi operator received a message from the Masada “ We have seem much heavy pack ice and a great number of bergs. Also field ice. The operator acknowledged but then Marconi operator never replied. No one will never know what happened to the message itself , in never reached the bridge.
Iceberg right ahead. At that moment the Titanic was not so much a ship as 52 310 displaced tons moving forward at 22 knots. As it was the iceberg was only 400 yards away when the Titanic’s bow began to swing slowly to one side. The quartermaster had his wheel hand over, but the vast underwater mass of the iceberg reached out and clawed at the oncoming mass of smooth steel. Everyone on the bridge felt the slight shock as she struck right up under her bow, 10 feet above the keel. The Titanic drove on, while the ice opened her up like a tin can. It took 10 seconds to leave a wound 300 feet long. From that moment , the biggest liner in the world had just under two and a half hour to live. In the saloons, a few of the passengers felt the impact and drifted out on deck. Some stared at the bulk of the iceberg for a while and picked up fragments of the ice that had fallen all around. But nothing of interest seemed to be going on, and it was bitterly cold. In one or twos they went back in to play cards. But things were very different down below. In No. 6 boiler room the sea was coming in through a vast hosepipe, a couple of feet above the plate while in No. 3 it was bursting through the bunkered coal. The men scrambled through the watertight doors as they ground heavy closed. In No.5 Stokehold there was a sudden angry roar as water flooded on to red hot coals. In minutes dark water was halfway up the sides of the boilers. The chief engineer told the captain “ We’re making water fast, the mail hold’s filling.” The Marconi operator sent a message:
“CQD I require assistance immediately. Struck iceberg in position 41 46 N 50 14 W. Ships headed for the rescue “ the Frankfurt, the Mount Temple, the Carpathian, the Caroni, the Baltic turned and headed at full speed towards the Titanic ,each as it turned out were too far away. The closest ship was the Californian who had shut down her engines over the horizon. Two rockets were sent up but sometimes ships exchanged greeting by sending rockets. The passengers on the Titanic knew they were distress rockets because they had started getting the women and children into the boats in the flickering light of the detonations. Soon the American press would write at length on the scenes of wild panic and of ship’s officers holding back maddened passengers at pistol point. But in fact most were unwilling to go. Some women stared tearfully at the 60 foot drop down to the water, others refused to leave their husbands or simply failed to see the necessity of it all. But the captain could not make things right. Deep in the remaining boiler rooms the engineers were keeping up the pressure in a vain attempt to save the pumps. Not a single engineer was saved, there they were down in the vessel and did not try to come up until all hope of safety had passed. Maybe it is a good thing there was no rush for the lifeboats, because there were not enough of them. There were in fact seats for only 1178 people for a ship that carried 3320 passengers when full. Some boats went down full , some half empty, while the ships band played ragtime . There would in due course be reports that third class passengers had been imprisoned in their flooding quarters while the great and wealthy got safely away. But in fact the women showed considerable reluctance to leave their men as well as refusing to abandon their baggage. In most cases it was all they had in the world. As soon as the boats were launched they were rowed desperately away from the ship. Some in the direction of an elusive light. Others in sudden panic to avoid the expected whirlpool that would engulf them all when the time came. The Titanic was going down. Although the great ship’s lights were still on, her bows had vanished and her propellers were already showing clear of the water. A little later the bridge itself lurched under. There was a sudden wild scramble from the doomed ship. Men began to jump or fall from her super structure. They came down with a litter of deck chairs, tables, and anything they figured would make a raft. All at once the sea was full of hundreds of people who screamed and yelled for help. Some became very quiet very quickly and the water was freezing. By now all 711 that were to live were already in boats. And the Titanic was slowly sliding out of sight. In Halifax there is a cemetery for many of the Titanic victims ,it was a tragedy that should never have happened and let us pray that it doesn’t happen again.
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